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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Now, please enlight me, how droping the "desktop" crap will grow the Slackware reliability advantage as a server OS?

Simple: Remove all that buggy, unreliable and abandoned code (i. e. systemd/udev, ConsoleKit, HALd etc.), which is only required for running soon to be stale freedesktop.org stuff, but nothing else. Just look at BSD. Linux doesn't need that code, because the "free desktop" won't happen anyway. Red Hat and Canonical only need that illusion to keep developers volunteering code to them for free.

Maybe we could go a little farther and get a desktop without that stuff. For instance it's easy to display (and type, with a proper IM) CJK characters in a tty with just vga or a frame buffer with fbterm + fontconfig + a true type font like wqy.{zen,micro}hei plus web browser relying on it and lib{ungif,jpeg,png}.

So we could try two opposite paths:

integrate systemd in Slackware as BartGymnast tries to do,

only use vga or frame buffer drivers and don't create devices on the fly. I'm not sure it'd be easy to watch videos then, but who needs to do that on a {lap,desk}top nowadays anyway?

Agreeing with jstn, to an extent. Reducing the number of dependent parts in a system makes the system more reliable, and there's cruft in the system which just isn't needed.

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Now, please enlight me, how droping the "desktop" crap will grow the Slackware reliability advantage as a server OS?

Consider: Any task a system needs to perform requires that some set of subtasks be performed.

If each subtask has a probability of performing its role correctly, then the probability that the entire task will be performed correctly is the product of these probabilities.

So, if we suppose P (for some value between 0 and 1) is the probability that any given subtask performs correctly, let's look at the probability of tasks of differing complexities being performed correctly:

This is admittedly a simplification, as real-life subcomponents have complex failure modes and not just a simple probability of failure, but it illustrates a simple truth: The fewer components a system has, the fewer opportunities it has to fail. This is why following the KISS Principle produces more robust systems.

So, clear out the unnecessary components, or replace them with simpler equivalents, and the robustness of the system improves.

Add components, or replace them with more complex equivalents, and the robustness of the system suffers.

I wouldn't abandon hope of keeping Slackware useful as a desktop, though. There's a chance that eudev is a suitable replacement for udev (haven't checked it out myself yet, but I hope someone on the Slackware dev team is), and might enable Slackware to continue providing its server and desktop features without systemd.

The main concern is that Slackware won't run various "desktop stuff" in the future, if it doesn't adopt Systemd. But my expectation is that exactly that stuff will be abandoned by upstream in a few years anyway. The end result will be a bunch of LennarX distributions with Systemd, running XTerms inside Fluxbox and FVWM. Once Mozilla has abandoned the Linux desktop as tier-1 platform, if will be hard to even get a web browser running.

So trashing Slackware to just have some short-lived fancy bling-bling isn't worth it. Slackware already has an advantage by not requiring a GUI installer, so it doesn't even depend on a display server. We need to keep the stuff working, that makes Slackware a great, reliable and stable experience.

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I'm not sure it'd be easy to watch videos then, but who needs to do that on a {lap,desk}top nowadays anyway?

You can have a perfect Linux appliance for that: http://openelec.tv/ That's exactly how Linux is used by the end-user nowadays.

Simple: Remove all that buggy, unreliable and abandoned code (i. e. systemd/udev, ConsoleKit, HALd etc.), which is only required for running soon to be stale freedesktop.org stuff, but nothing else. Just look at BSD. Linux doesn't need that code, because the "free desktop" won't happen anyway. Red Hat and Canonical only need that illusion to keep developers volunteering code to them for free.

I.e, I look at NetBSD and I see a very simple platform (, but with very poor hardware support, compared to Linux,) which can be emulated by stripping down your Slackware installation to cca. 100 packages.

Then, I see its very nice ports system, having around of 12000 packages (three frakking times of SBo!), with a nice dependency tracking system and all the bells...

Same we go with FreeBSD. But there we have around 40000 packages in the ports.

Someone can write a nice desktop environment using Qt, running directly on the top of KMS framebuffer...

Linux desktop environments are a thing of the past.

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You can even have (E)GL and even a nice web browser built in the top of (Qt)Webkit.

But the point of having a computer is not running a web browser. Everything with a LCD can browse the web nowadays.

Slackware has strengths in serving web applications, databases and files, routing and filtering traffic, being a great development workstation and so on. Don't let fancy bling-bling must-boot-faster get in the way of that.

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I.e, I look at NetBSD and I see a very simple platform (, but with very poor hardware support, compared to Linux,) which can be emulated by stripping down your Slackware installation to cca. 100 packages.

Well no, even by stripping down Slackware you won't get the small footprint of NetBSD. Just compare the size of glibc with NetBSD's POSIX-conformant libc. And of course, once you have systemd in the system, you wont get anything that even remotely resembles a BSD UNIX...

Well, the Real Life demonstrate that you are epic wrong. Because for every lonely GNU/Linux user, there are 5000 frakking Android users. Whis is (esentialy) a Linux desktop environment.

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Originally Posted by jtsn

But the point of having a computer is not running a web browser.

Sorry, but I don't give a crap for a (personal) computer unable to run a web browser. Sure, I work with servers and I earn a meal from them, but them are NOT my frakking computers.

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Originally Posted by jtsn

Everything with a LCD can browse the web nowadays.

Sure, using a Linux desktop environment known also as Android...

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Originally Posted by jtsn

Slackware has strengths in serving web applications, databases and files, routing and filtering traffic, being a great development workstation and so on. Don't let fancy bling-bling must-boot-faster get in the way of that.

Sure, you see Slackware's future just as a web server, nothing more. Or as a appliance?

BUT, again, I don't give a crap for a great development workstation unable to run a web browser. Because I need a web brouser for reading documentation, news, even to post there. Or you think that I post there using netcat and I read LQ using wget?

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Originally Posted by jtsn

Well no, even by stripping down Slackware you won't get the small footprint of NetBSD. Just compare the size of glibc with NetBSD's POSIX-conformant libc.

Yet again, I don't give a crap about small memory footprints on my computers. The lamest of them have "only" 8GB RAM. So, what's the point to care?

Also I suggest you to finally dump your techno-crap and buy a modern computer...

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Originally Posted by jtsn

And of course, once you have systemd in the system, you wont get anything that even remotely resembles a BSD UNIX...

Of course, you don't have. But there is no law which force Linux to resemble BSD UNIX or to die...

BUT, again, I don't give a crap for a great development workstation unable to run a web browser. Because I need a web brouser for reading documentation, news, even to post there.

You can still be logged on a Linux development workstation while browsing the web and reading documentation on a different (most likely Linux-based) device. Remember the times, where these "man pages" came along as a printed book? Unix was created in those days.

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Or you think that I post there using netcat and I read LQ using wget?

That's the point of the discussion. Making reading LQ and watching YouTube the main purpose of Slackware Linux and sacrificing everything else for this is not the right way. We need reliable Unix for tasks, which can't be accomplished with anything else.

I often wonder if the fact that GNU/Linux has no absolutes as far as standards go it's ultimate weakness to all this infiltration being made against UNIX and other UNIX-like standards that have such clear defined standards? It would seem to me, and I'm sorry if this next phrase incurs the wrath of every GNU/Linux user, maintainer, and distributor, all this pride of openness to freedom, liberalistic values and ideas, and willingness to accept chance without merit has done nothing good for GNU/Linux period in the long term, only the short , temporary, and fleeting? And I wonder if this lack of foundation will be the downfall and destruction of GNU/Linux?